Just Over 3-weeks...

Well, it has been just a little over 3-weeks since we took custody of Alex over in Russia... he has been home 2-weeks as of tomorrow evening.  Everything is going well as we all are adjusting to a new definition of family life.  Alex is learning that he has a daddy, mommy, and sisters... as well as that not everything is ok to play with... like throwing toys down the stairs, and doors can pinch, and dirty fingers on flat-screen TVs leave pretty smudges... :-)  And we are adjusting to life with a adventurous, curious 2-year old... if he can see it, he will try to touch it, lift it, grab it, throw it, etc, etc!!  It's great, but we are a new kind of busy!!  :-)

Here are a few pics from the past few days...

This year's Christmas photo

Got my first USA haircut today (1/3/2013).  I think he feels 10 pounds lighter!  :-)

Alex imitating us praying at dinner tonight... I'm sure he has no idea what we were saying yet, but it was awful cute!  So, we imagine he is saying, "Thank you, Lord, for my family... now get that hamburger and rice over here."  :-)

Home At Last, Home At Last... Thank the Lord We Are Home At Last

We arrived home last night just past 7pm (CST)... thankfully, we made it through all the border processes in Chicago smoothly, except that we had forgotten that we had gotten some fresh fruit in Moscow with our breakfast boxes!  Ooops.. those can't come in to the US!  :-)

We were truly blessed with no delays and smooth flights.  Overall, Alex did pretty well on all of his flights... especially the long flight to Chicago.  He loved riding in the snuggly sling which was a blessing especially with all the waiting at Passport control and Customs, etc.

We had a small welcome crew at home (by request)... here are some pics!

Meeting Grandma & Grandpa for the first time

Playing with sisters

 

Sitting with PawPaw

Sitting with Grandpa

Playing with MeMaw

Reading a story with Grandma

Eating my first breakfast at home!  I enjoyed Lydia feeding me!

Passport with Visa ... check

Well, we now have a Russian Passport with Visa in-hand, as well as a sealed envelope of documents that have to stay sealed until we arrive in Chicago ("Unclassified, but Sensitive" per the stamp).  I was kinda hoping for a locked, handcuffed briefcase, a black suit, an ear bud, and some sunglasses, but a brown paper envelope with scotch tape will have to do!  :-)

This will probably be the last post from Russia ... pray for smooth flights.  It's likely to be a somewhat long day of travel!  :-)  Once we get back to Pontiac, I will try to post an update or two, but bear with me if it takes a day or two as it will likely take a day or so to decompress from the travels.

Pics for the day...

A shot of the Embassy from the car... this is on the way away from the Embassy.

The exit door complete with USA Seal

A shot inside the Gym (mall... pronounced "Goom"). we went here again after the Embassy just to kill some time.  Everything was _way_ out of our price range, but fun to look.

Playing "peek-a-boo" in the hotel this afternoon... LOTS of times!  :-)

Less than 36 hours...

Quick post ... we don't have a separate room here in Moscow, so we can't leave the computer connected when bed time rolls around.  Didn't do a lot today... medicals went well (and quick).  The doctor (Boris) was very nice.  We were done very quickly so we went to Red Square, Basil Cathedral, and the Kremlin, and a higher-point of the city to take some bigger city pics... there really ins't a lot to Moscow to be quite honest.  Lots of buildings, but even per our driver, Red Square is about it.

Visa interview tomorrow, then back here afterward to start packing for home!

Here are a few pics of the yesterday and today...

Waiting to board the high-speed train ... it was COLD!  It was so cold that the lid to Alex's sippy cup froze in place!

Red Square with Basil Cathedral in background

Alex enjoying the tour

Taking a ride shoulder-style

Leaving on a High-Speed Train...

... Don't know when we'll be back again...We are packed and pretty much ready to leave for Moscow (in about an hour).  Thank you St. Petersburg... it's been a fun ride, but it's time for this train to move on out!

Here are a few pics to wet your appetite from yesterday and our tickets to ride today...

Playing in the Winter Garden Room

You might be in Russia if ..... there is a tree with Soviet Union ornaments in your hotel

Tickets to ride...

Quick Post... sorry!

This will be a quick post as it has been somewhat of a long day on multiple levels.  As of this morning, we have Alex's Russian Passport in hand, and will be heading to Moscow tomorrow early afternoon on the high-speed rail.  No pictures really to post today, because there just wasn't much activity here ... unless you count cooking dinner and laundry! :-)

Will plan to hopefully post some pictures of the trip tomorrow evening from Moscow!!

An Afternoon Out and About...

Phew, what a day.  Alex was a bit restless through the night, but finally found his sleeping-groove early this morning then ended up sleeping in to catch up on sleep.  Thankfully, we were all able to sleep in... it was a really good sleep.  We all needed it!  And, even with sleeping in, he (and I) took a really good nap too!  :-)

After nap, we decided to go toward downtown again.  The sun was shining and it was a relatively decent day in St. Petersburg, Russia terms (no new snow!).  We took the subway down to Nevesky Prospekt, but more on the eastern end... Leslie had found a shopping mall she wanted to go to ... the Galleria.  We did get lost while walking, went to a hotel lobby to ask at the desk (no help).  Good for us, there was an information booth near the main street and they spoke English!  Anyhow, shopping was on the agenda... and there were tons of people ... I can't even compare it to any crowds I have ever experienced at a mall.  Leslie spent nearly 15min just trying to find us a table while I stood in line to order/pay.  Oh boy, was I ever in heaven... NOT!!  Although, Alex did get his first taste of McDs and he got his picture with Father Frost.

We made it back to the hotel with time to Skype with several people, then it was bedtime for Alex.  He pretty well went right to sleep after the day's adventures and travels.

Ok, so here's what you have all probably come for ... not my boring commentary!  :-)  New pics for the day...

Getting ready for the day

Moscow Train  Station (in St. Petersburg).  This is where we will leave from on Tuesday.  The Galleria Mall was behind  this building.

Alex and I in front on the Lego tree at the Mall... it was literally under construction. 

Checkin' out the Happy Meal

French Fry .... Hmmm.  That's a new tastes?!

Alex saw this bear in a store front (but thought it was a dog and kept saying "Oof, ... Oof!").  He was totally enthralled... he just looked and looked and looked at it!!  We literally had to lift him to get him to leave the window.

Alex with Father Frost (Santa).
In case you are wondering, Leslie was cut out of the picture by given orders, not by my choice. I actually thought it was a good pic... :-)

Touring in the Cold ... An Oxymoron!!

So, today we decided that we wanted to see just a few sights of St. Petersburg and get pictures with Alex before we leave... not knowing when we will be back again.  The other option was to sit in the hotel room and walk around the hotel time after time after time.  But, given the frigid cold, I'm not so sure if that monotony wouldn't have been preferred!  :-)  We also needed to go back to the OkeN Supermarket to get a few groceries items we forgot yesterday... one of those being diapers.  Of this I have no doubt, since Alex left the orphanage, their diaper budget has surely been at least halved!!  To put it bluntly, he is a poopin' machine!  I think he can just look at food and it somehow manifests in his colon!!!  :-)

Anyhow, long-story-short, (this is the beginning of the story where our sense of adventure outweighed our sense of reason) we took the subway downtown, walked the 1/4-mile to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (<- right here is the exact point where the sense of reason began to level-out), took about 15 pictures, walked the 1/4-mile back to Nevesky Prospect (the main street ... this is also the point in the story where the sense of reason won out and said it was time to get out of the frigid cold), went to a cafe to thaw out, then returned to the subway to go to the grocery store, then back to the hotel.  It was not all bad, but I think it took me 3-hours to thaw out once we returned.  Alex was bundled up snug-as-a-bug-in-rug ... between his thick coat and snow pants, etc, etc he was plenty warm and comfortable...even to the point that he fell asleep in the snuggly sling he was in!!

Back at the hotel again now, laundry is done, and another day is under our belts... tomorrow we might just get on the subway and ride from stop-to-stop just to see the underground "world" ... it's cheap entertainment (and it's warm down there)!!  :-)  We go to get Alex's Passport on Monday!!

So, here are a few of today's picture memories...

Hard to really appreciate from the picture, but this  clock tower  is all lit up.  They really do a bang-up job decorating for Christmas!  Lots of trees, lots of lights!  Also, this picture was taken right about 10a... notice how dark it still is?

Leslie and Alex in front of one of the many Christmas trees throughout St. Petersburg

Leslie and Alex in front of a facade of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Thawing out at a local Cafe

Alex said "enough" and decided it was time to nap.  This was a very difficult picture, because we had returned to the warmth of the subway tunnel and my lens was sp cold it was fogging up as quickly as I could clean it!

Another day closer... :-)

Well, as of today, we have less than a week before we will be heading for home.  Whoo-hoo!!  Now that we have Alex, it makes us a bit home sick, and we long to be back home!!  We are excited to be getting closer and closer!

Today's adventure was going for lunch and groceries... we decided that we would grab some lunch at a local restaurant, then go grocery shopping.  (The restaurant is located right next to the OkeN supermarket).  So, we took the subway, went to the shopping complex, and then realized the restaurant hadn't actually opened yet.  !!!DOH!!!  So, we decided that we would just get some groceries and go back to the hotel to eat.  And here's what we learned about our _oh, so simple_ plan... looking for groceries when your command of the foreign language is limited and the pictures don't always seem to help, can be quite challenging.  For example, we thought we would get some cans of soup to cook in our suite... simple enough... well, apparently they don't make canned soup here.  After some searching (and I mean aisle-by-aisle searching), we did find some dry soup packets.  Another example, spaghetti sauce and some ketchups come in jars... and they look very, very similar.  Problem: a meal of spaghetti and ketchup is pretty different than spaghetti with meat sauce.  Thank God that we found a "kit" that had some spaghetti noodles attached to a jar of sauce!  :-)  Anyhow, long-story-short, what was going to be a quick trip turned in to a 2-hr excursion.  On the way back, we grabbed a foot long... well, 15-cm long :-) ... at the local SubWay... they were so helpful and patient and nice with 2-travel weiry Americans and their newly added child, it was almost enough to bring tears to our eyes after the difficulty we had experienced at the supermarket!  :-) 

On top of all that, it started snowing during our to/from trips... have I mentioned that is has snowed every . day . since . we . arrived?!  I'm not sure where Leslie is on this one, but I know that I have seen enough snow to last me this season (maybe more).  I'm fine if IL has a relatively mild winter again!  Sorry all you wintery, snow-lovers... if you want snow, get a Passport and a Visa, and I'll tell you right where to go!  :-)

Alex is in bed now ... but not asleep.  The adventure this afternoon threw his schedule for a bit of loop because of a later than normal nap time.  I'm in the kitchen area now and he is with Leslie in the bedroom "singing" and chatting away.  Oh well, he's happy nonetheless!  :-)

We also heard from our Russian coordinator today that we will go at some point Monday (prob morning) to pick-up Alex's Passport.  It will be ready tomorrow, but they are expecting lots of people, so apparently advised that Monday would be better and that it would be available at any point during the day.  Getting closer.......  :-)

Here are a few pics from the day...

Taken earlier this morning (from one of the sitting areas in an  upper floor in our hotel) ... the Moskovsky Triumphal Gate . Notice all the traffic coming _in to_ town (headlights)... lots of traffic jams here!

When we got back to our room after a walk around the hotel, the cleaning ladies had tucked Meesh-kaw (bear) in for a nap!  They are really great here!  Very sweet!

Near the end of our adventure to the OkeN... it was a Christmas backdrop, and this was as good as we could do at the moment.  Alex was ready to get outta there (and so were we)!

The view from our room ... that is St. Isaac's Cathedral in the center far, far background

Making dinner... some type of chicken stock, noodle/vegetable soup.  It was pretty good... everybody enjoyed it.  Of course, after the adventure to get it, no one was willing to complain!! :-)

Alex learned to sign "more" this evening at dinner time.  He was so excited to ask for "more"!  He would giggle and laugh everytime!!!

Once again, all cleaned up and ready for bed!  Good night all!!

Playin' It On the Down Low

It is now early Friday morning in Russia (abt 5:45a) and I am up, so thought it would be a great time to update the blog since everyone else here is still sleeping.  We are in a suite here at the Staybridge, which has been excellent at nap and bed times... and for times when Leslie and I are up early because our schedules are still "off".

Thursday was a low-key day for us.  We mostly stayed around the hotel.  We did have a brief outing to walk up the street to a local cafe for lunch, but otherwise stayed-in.  Alex had another really great day!  He helped us with laundry... for some reason, pretty much all of my clothes needed to be re-folded once I got back to the room!  :-)  Beyond that, we played a lot, walked around the hotel a lot, Skyped with family, and just hung-out!

Alex did have a brief moment of a nightmare last night not too long into the evening.  We are assuming he woke a bit and then was disoriented to his surroundings.  He _screamed_ out, but was quickly consoled and was back to sleep in no time at all.  Otherwise, he has slept great these past 2 nights... wish I could say the same for myself!   I will probably be pretty well adjusted right about the time we are leaving Moscow! Haha! :-)

Here are a few pics from the day...

Our hotel has a nice little playroom.  We went there not too long after breakfast when our room was bring cleaned and laundry was running.  It has a ball pit (Alex with his "Meesh-kaw" [bear])...

...and a slide.  (and several other things to help entertain!)

Bundled and ready to go out for lunch!

Mmmm, Mmmm ... good.  We went to Stolle (pron: Sch-toal- lee).  Leslie and I had soups that we shared with Alex, as well as Mushroom and Chicken "pies" (pierogies).  They were excellent!! And, Lydia and Madelynn will love to know that Alex really likes borscht (pictured). :-)

Back at the hotel. After another great day, ready for bed. Alex _loves_ his slippers!

Not sure what is on the calender for today... we talked about maybe taking the subway toward downtown and possibly going to the Oceanarium/Aquarium.  We'll see how the morning plays out and what were up to weather-wise, etc, etc.

All for now!  Thanks for reading and following along with us!

.: Gotcha Day - 12/12/12 :.

 So, the day FINALLY arrived!  After much waiting and waiting... and waiting, Alex is ours... in our custody and ours!!  :-) The day went very, extremely well!!  We started out for the local superstore called the OkeN (similar to WalMart).  We had to get 2 cakes for the workers, fruit for all of the kids, and flower for our director and the doctor (it's tradition).  Once that was all taken care of, we headed to the orphanage.  We arrived about 11:00a, and after some meeting time with the director and Alex getting a morning snack, he was brought to us to be changed and readied to go home.

He did very well on the trip to the hotel!  Our translator had bought bags and wipes for travel sickness "just in case".  She had noted that a recent couple had adopted 2 girls and one cried the whole way in the car and the other was very sick!  Thanks be to God, Alex did _wonderful_!  Our translator estimated that he had only been out of the orphanage probably only 3 times in his life since birth.  So, he started out a bit scared and anxious, but quickly warmed up.  Unfortunately, because of traffic jams, he had _plenty_ of time to warm up!  :-)

We arrived back to the hotel at about 3pm, and Skyped with family quickly so they could get there first live glimpses of the "newest addition".  He had a brief nap, and then was a real live-wire!  We attempted to walk the hotel a bit, but it was so busy that it was just a bit overwhelming to a child who has seen only a handful of adults and has only seen brief episodes of the world outside his orphanage walls.

He ate a dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stewed carrots, then bathtime, and is now in bed.  Leslie is laying down with him as I type as he seemed as though he might get a bit tear-y when she began to lay him down in the crib.

Overall, he has done very well for day one!  And he seems to have already picked up his first word in English ... "ball".  Unless he is saying something altogether different that his crazy American parents haven't figured out yet!!  :-)

We also have our high-speed rail tickets booked for next week.  We are taking the Sapsan train to Moscow which travels at 322 km/h (200mph) and makes the 650km (404 miles) trip in just over 4hrs.  I know the math seems wrong there for all you brainy people, but it doesn't go 200mph the whole trip and there are 4-stops.  Jeepers, this is starting to sound like a story problem!!  :-)

Tomorrow will be a low-key day ... nothing planned... just laundry!  It will be nice to just have a day to ourselves without schedules or driving or waiting!  :-)

Ok... now on to the good stuff ... the stuff most all of you have come to see ... the pictures!!  :-)

Changed into his new clothes ... Thanks to Lynette Duncan who _handmade_ this shirt for our boy!!

Bundled and ready to leave!

 

Relaxed and enjoying the ride home (to the hotel)

I really like this hat... I wore it a lot just for fun!

Hey! Did I mention I like this hat?!

Dinner time ... getting a chance to wear Daddy's hat!

Bath-time!

All cleaned up!

Ready for bed! (Can you tell I'm just a bit tired?)

PS: I love my teddy bear and I'm a thumb-sucker too!  :-)  Good night all!  See you in the morning after a (hopefully) long, good nights rest!  :-)